Long Island medium Theresa Caputo will be at the Palace Theatre in Albany this Sunday and Monday .
PHOTO PROVIDED

ALBANY >> Theresa Caputo of “Long Island Medium” sold out 3,000 seats for her Sunday afternoon show at Albany’s Palace Theatre a couple of months ago, and a second show was added for 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Like James Van Praagh and Lisa Williams, who also have appeared locally, Caputo does spontaneous readings with select members of her audience, delivering to them messages from departed loved ones.

Unlike them, however, Caputo has become a reality TV star with her show “Long Island Medium,” now in its fifth season on TLC. Cameras follow her around as she goes about her business as a wife and mother with a teenaged son and daughter. As she makes her way through life, Caputo encounters people and spontaneously relates what “Spirit” tells her about their departed relatives and friends.

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Most of the readings come from chance encounters. She doesn’t even take part in editing the episodes.

“When you watch ‘Long Island Medium’ Sunday nights at 9, that’s when I’m seeing the show for the first time as well,” she said. “I watch it right along with my viewers. I don’t look at my life any different because I have a television show and all that. It’s just capturing my life.

“I’m still able to do every day what I’ve been doing for years long before ‘Long Island Medium.’ I’m still reading people privately. I’m doing group readings in people’s homes. I do my restaurants. I still do my fund raisers. So, for me I’m living my everyday life.

“What is more difficult is when I’m out at the stores, and I’m standing next to someone, and they’re telling their (departed) mother, ‘Please come through and tell Theresa to tell me something.’ That is the only difference. Now people know who I am.”

Caputo had her gift from the time she was a little girl, but for the longest time she didn’t recognize it and suffered from great anxiety.

“I went to therapy because I thought I was crazy for years, and they told me there was nothing wrong,” she said. “I actually went to a spiritual healer and (learned) the reason for my anxiety was because I feel ‘Spirit.’ I feel their energy and their presence, whether it be a bond or relationship or how they passed, and what she helped me learn was how to understand what they were trying to show me.”

Needless to say, connecting a daughter with her departed mom or a father with his son who has passed away can be a wrenching and deeply moving experience.

“Sometimes Spirit is very blunt, and they blurt it out. I might try and deliver a message more gently, but the message and the point of what Spirit wants to give to my client is always conveyed and we just do it. And by we I mean Spirit and I in a very respectful way. And sometimes there are sensitive issues that Spirit brings up, and they want to help. They want the person to be able to heal,” Caputo said of editing Spirit’s communiques.

“I find what Spirit does is they learn lessons on the other side that help their soul grow. They’re giving us the gift of — if you want to say — forgiveness. And I think it works both ways because people carry such guilt connected with their loved one’s passing, regardless of what it is. And I found with these messages that Spirit is giving us forgiveness or permission and the ability to let go of all those guilts, saying, ‘I don’t want you to carry those.’ I feel the messages from Spirit are for us. They’re giving us the gift of forgiveness as well.”

As with religion, the subject of mediums is extremely controversial, and for all the comfort a medium like Caputo brings to those in pain over their loss, there are countless skeptics trying to prove she is a fake. Caputo is not rattled by these.

“I just feel what I’m able to do is validate what you’re sensing and feeling is real, and you’re not crazy and knowing that it is your loved ones because I think the afterlife is a question that everyone does have,” she said. “After my gift and embracing it, I’m not afraid of death. I was afraid of dying. I think most people are and especially as a child, and I don’t have that feeling anymore.”